Still Life
by azriel.infinite
Summary: You don't listen to shadows with pointed, angelwhite-dagger teeth. You don't go looking back for your shadow to see if it's still there.


&

he takes a deep breath and amidst the green fields that lay burning underneath the torrid sun, the drying river, the slowly disappearing black asphalt covering the world and the crumbling remains of the world that rose above, towards the sky, but never reaching salvation, he forces his hands to cover the sky and its light and whispers, "I ... I can be really strong if I wanted to be." Perfect enunciation, and all, lying amongst the dead autumn leaves in the abandoned park, cracked and marred and grimy, lost. Leaves falling and branches snapping into halves. No birds singing.

Surely this is the end of the world.

Standing behind him, a pop-up shadow, the Kamui of the Dragons of Earth look at him with glassy eyes and pointed, dagger-angelwhite teeth. Though he's listening to Debussy in his headphones, he'd heard the entire confession and traps the words to spins them around. "I-I can be really really strong if I wanted to be," he says. Perfect enunciation and all.

No birds singing. Kamui sits up in anger and rises, rises and swirls in an imperfect arc to punch his face but his little hands connect with a silent, open palm stiff like the hand of God instead and Fuuma smiles.

"Did I mirror you wrong?"

"No," Kamui spat out, eyes brittle, skin pale and bruised; broken. Lost. Dying. "You did it too well."

With Debussy in his ears humming lullabies and dreams the crumbling buildings towards the distance collapse into ash and fade away and the world heaves and _shakes_. Kamui's eyes widen and runs, just runs, while Fuuma closes his eyes and hums the tunes in his head.

&

The next time they meet was embarassing, vulgar and full of dust. An abandoned ruin in the middle of the city where nobody haunts except for ghosts (_nobody haunts them except for ghosts_ Subaru said and he knows this because he's been there all by himself before) and Fuuma stands in the middle of the ruins. Humming. Singing.

"You can gain nothing from singing," Kamui says scathingly and his hands were poised and made to look like talons, like harpy nails and sharp wooden stakes. Oh but he can do this. If he steps closer, if he moves a little faster, he can take his neck and break it into half and where will that shadow of that illusion of that image of that outline will be?

"You can gain nothing from singing," Fuuma replies back and there is nothing in his voice and nothing in his face and nothing in him that is actually his and Kamui meets his glassy blackbeetle eyes and tries to move _tries_ to move but the hatred falls a little too short and his foot makes it seven inches from his original spot before he collapses on the ruins and pretends himself a graveyard of bones by spreading his arms and pretending that he's dead, he's fallen, the world's over because he can't even fucking _move_.

Tears streak his face and flood the dead concrete and Fuuma hums a song while the sun sets in the distance in red and purple

&

bruised from another failed battle he walks home. His skin's too pale and he's too thin and maybe he should start listening to Sorata when he said that he needed to eat more, sleep more; or listen to Yuzuriha, even, who's been trying to convince him to _live more_.

The curtains flutter in his room and on his pale skin he traces the purple and yellow things and realizes how much he is like the world he's trying to save: purpled and yellowed, with flowers that bloom in all the forgotten places; naked; stripped.

In the dark of the night he traces his scars and he senses a familiarity in their shapes. From far away Fuuma hums a lullaby from the lonely tower of the world and looks at all the stars, tracing the constellations with a weary finger and pronouncing their names like the litany of the saints.

"It's amazing how much light floods in when you split a body into two," he said to no-one, no-one, because he was no-one and no-one was there with him and he smiled.

Just another end-of-the-world day.


End file.
